Visitors to Cornwall will have seen the ruined mine engine houses that mark
the remains of the tin and copper industry. Deep under the earth the miners
toiled in oppressive and exploitative conditions; a long and dangerous descent
into darkness would be followed by the arduous task of extracting the ore and
getting it up to the surface where the Bal-Maidens would process the raw
material to extract and purify the valuable metals.
Whilst locating the seams of tin or copper, the miners would come across other
minerals, dull and seemingly worthless to the inexperienced surface dweller
these gems would however, reveal their value and beauty once they had been
faceted and polished.
The ability of humans to release the latent potential of the natural world - led
to the discovery of fire, the cultivation of crops and the domestication of
animals. While I write, my collie dog Yalla lies snuggled up by my feet, a
comforting presence untroubled by the violent competition that once
characterised our ancestoral relationship. I wonder who first realised that the
pack behaviour, aggression and cunning of these creatures could be
transformed into the loyalty, courage and intelligence that we see in our canine
companions today?
Thousands of years later in Greece another observer of the natural world would
ponder on how best to release human potential. In the Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle defined aretê - virtue or excellence - as the basis of human
flourishing, which he defined as a disposition to behave in the right manner
and as a mean between extremes of deficiency and excess, which are vices.
Vice/ Deficiency———————————Virtue——————————-Vice/ Excess
As a teacher I asked myself whether undesirable characteristics might in
young children be outliers or markers for innate virtue. In order to explore
these concepts with other educators I created Rufkin Grufkin a wolf cub with
two vices - recklessness at one end of the scale and cowardice at the other.
Cowardice ———————————-????????——————————Recklessness
Over the years I had worked with a number of Rufkin Grufkin characters: one
joined our school after things got difficult at his previous placement. Every
morning, in all weathers he would walk miles to get to our school, his trousers
held up with string, wolfing down his free school meal and anything else he
could get his hands on. He was challenging, and disruptive but could always be
could be counted on to remove the large spiders that sometimes entered
through the window of our rural school. He was also grateful for whatever you
could do for him eagerly lapping up all the life experiences that we could
provide him with. Happily his innate virtues became apparent to all and he
thrived there.
In later years I would ask my pupils to explore through play how Rufkin might
behave in various situations and how he might overcome his vices and
moderate them to find the virtue of courage located between the two
extremes.
Cowardice/deficiency———————Courage —————-—Recklessness/ Excess
Of course where there are wolves there will also be sheep. A new character
came into shape Lammy Lamb representing all those little souls who tend to
unthinkingly copy the behaviour of others regardless of the harm caused to
themselves or their friends. My teaching colleagues found it easy to identify
the sheep like vice - uniformity- but the hidden or unpolished gem of virtue
was harder to isolate.
The contribution of these lamb like characters to any classroom can be easily
overlooked, but, in my experience, one of their strengths is a tendency to
include everyone into the family or classroom flock. With the right
encouragement and guidance these children can excel at the virtue of Unity or
inclusivity helping to draw in the lonely more isolated children. Of course they
also need to work on their virtues of creativity and independence. Other child
character archetypes, notably a hedgehog (prickly, yet empathically sensitive to
the trauma suffered by others) have been recognised by teachers in countries
some of which don’t even have hedgehogs!
All these playful characters archetypes can be useful in helping us to identify
the virtues hidden like unpolished gems within ourselves, and within the
challenging little characters that we all encounter from time to
time.
Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone,
cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom.
Bahá’u’lláh